The Only Good Priest

by Mark Richard Zubro

  My turn to nod. “You afraid of something? Somebody bothering you?” I asked this quietly. The dim basement light lent itself to confidences.

  He gave a brief shiver in the coolness. “I can’t tell my dad. You know how upset he gets.” Older brother Brian isn’t the only one in the family with a temper. I have the longest fuse of any of them, but when I explode it’s probably the worst of all.

  “The priest at church.” Jerry gulped. “He told me he’d kill me if I ever told.”

  2

  Jerry, I knew, served as an altar boy at St. Joseph’s Parish in River’s Edge. Glen had married a Catholic and agreed to bring up the kids in her religion. Their religious orientation didn’t bother me.

  I watched Jerry carefully as he told me the story. He’d served Saturday morning Mass earlier today for Father Clarence Rogers. Jerry had actually forgotten his ice skates in the altar boys’ robing room off the sacristy and had gone back to get them. He’d been rooting around in the back of a walk-in closet under a pile of old cassocks when he’d heard angry voices.

  Jerry’d only recognized Father Clarence’s voice, and he didn’t hear everything they said, but a lot of what he did hear was about Father Sebastian. The two voices blamed each other for his death, one of them saying they were lucky to be Catholic priests in Cook County, where people still respected the clergy enough to know when to shut up. They’d yelled about screwing their stories up when they talked to the police.

  Jerry’d frozen when the voices started. You weren’t supposed to be in the sacristy without permission. The voices faded. Jerry began to think he was safe. He stretched to relax his tense muscles. In doing so he bumped a row of empty hangers. They clanged resoundingly. He prayed the voices had gone far enough not to hear, and for tense moments nothing happened. Then the door swung open. Father Clarence dragged him out of the closet and raged at him for ten minutes about being a sneak, and a cheat who would go to hell.

  “I kind of believed the threats, and kind of not. He was really mad, and he did scare me. Uncle Tom, I don’t understand all this.” Jerry scratched the brush-cut side of his head. The hair on top and in back flowed in waves nearly to his shoulders. “He said if I told, I’d be sorry. I lied and told him I didn’t hear anything, but I don’t know if he believed me.

  “I thought about it as I walked home. I know I’m not supposed to tell lies, especially to a priest, but I’m glad I did. If I listened to him, I’d have to live in fear. You told me you’d never do that. I won’t either.” He looked proud, young shoulders squared, chin thrust forward just like his dad’s when daring us to fight thirty years ago.

  I said, “You were right to tell me. Don’t worry about the lie you told him. You don’t have to be afraid of some priest. His threats sound like those of a terrified man, not somebody who’s practicing what a good priest is supposed to do.”

  I watched some of the tension drain from his body. “I’m glad I told you. My dad would have yelled and carried on. He might not even believe me. Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You won’t tell my dad, will you, Uncle Tom?”

  “Not unless you say it’s okay,” I said. I asked him a few questions about what he’d heard, but he only remembered what he’d already told me. I asked him about Father Sebastian. He frowned. Said he didn’t know him well. Father Clarence ran the altar boy program and taught them religion classes at school. He’d only served mass for Father Sebastian twice. They’d barely talked before and after the service.

  “What are you going to do?” Jerry asked.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  He looked at me carefully, then gave me a wicked grin. “Get the son of a bitch.”

  “I think I’ll have a little chat with Father Clarence in the morning.”

  “Don’t hurt him too much,” Jerry said.

  I smiled. “I won’t.” I clapped Jerry on the shoulder and stood up. “Maybe I’ll beat you at Monopoly tonight,” I said as we mounted the stairs.

  I won the last Monopoly game. First Glen, then Jerry, landed on Marvin Gardens with a hotel just after I made a fortunate deal with Scott. Served them right for bankrupting me in the first two games. They left at eleven.

  I’ve got an old VCR and a small TV in the bedroom. We threw the unfinished movie into the system, turned the sound on low, got undressed, and crawled into bed. Scott sat up with his back propped by a mound of pillows against the headboard. I pressed my back onto his chest. He draped his arms around me. He waited until we were comfortable to ask what was bothering Jerry.

  I pressed the pause button on the remote control.

  “How did you know he was upset?”

  I felt him shrug. “Instinct.”

  Scott is great with kids, especially those under six years old. When we’d known each other about two years, I agreed to baby-sit Glen’s kids while he and Jeannette took a two-week cruise to the Bahamas over Christmas vacation. I half expected Scott to retreat to his Lake Shore Drive penthouse, a recent purchase after his first million-dollar contract. Instead, he’d eagerly volunteered to help. Some things I’m good at. They don’t include little kids, but I owed Glen and Jeannette a big favor.

  Jerry’d just turned five. The other kids were younger, down to six months old. Over the two weeks we’d done a couple of family things with my other nephews and nieces: Lincoln Park Zoo, the Field Museum. Scott amazed me. He can organize a herd of unruly kids as well as any mother. Then, after a mildly chaotic, kid-filled New Year’s Eve, Jerry woke up in the middle of the night frightened, crying, and throwing up. I hadn’t the first notion of what was wrong or what to do. The kid wouldn’t stop being sick. I’d about decided on a trip to the hospital emergency room when Scott padded into the kitchen. Through his yawns he quickly sized up the situation. He took the kid, and I ran to get dressed.

  Minutes later I found them in the rocking chair in the darkened living room. I watched from the kitchen doorway. Scott rocked Jerry slowly, speaking softly to him. The crying had become intermittent. Once in a while Jerry asked for something to drink.

  I brought a glass of water from the kitchen, knelt next to them, and offered him the drink. Scott shook his head. “He won’t keep it down,” he said. “Bring me a towel.”

  I dashed to the bathroom and hurried back. “What’s wrong with him?” I whispered.

  At that moment Jerry let out a series of plaintive cries. Scott soothed him. “He’s probably got a touch of the flu. He shouldn’t drink anything until he’s done throwing up. When that’s over, we could give him a few sips of warm Coke.”

  Of course there wasn’t any in the house. So I ran to the White Hen at 191st and Wolf Road. I got back in ten minutes. The two still rocked. Jerry was crying softly and whining, but his arms were tightly and trustingly entwined around Scott’s neck.

  “Let’s try a little of the Coke. I think he’s had time for his stomach to settle enough.” I opened it and gave it to him. The kid kept it down. The crying bouts came farther apart and the sips closer together. Some time before he sent me back to bed, Scott told me he’d learned his kid skills taking care of his older sister’s family as he grew up. He spent most of his teenage years either playing baseball or baby-sitting.

  Later, when I felt him crawl into bed, I glanced at the clock, saw it was five. He’d been up over three hours.

  “Jerry okay?” I mumbled.

  “Fine.” He sighed.

  I snuggled close to him. I knew then—if I’d ever doubted it—that I loved him and wanted to stay with him forever. Later I told him. Fortunately, he felt the same.

  Now I filled him in on Jerry’s story. His reaction was the same as mine: we had to check it out. I outlined my ideas for the next day. Besides a visit to the priest and the cops, I wanted to see Neil and his buddies. I’d find out if this Father Clarence committed murder, and if he did, I’d nail his ass to the altar. Nobody threatens my favorite nephew! When Jerry told me, I’d masked my anger for his sake, but while telling t
he story to Scott, I’d begun to get furious at this priest. Scott calmed me down, and we discussed strategy for meeting the priest the next day.

  Around midnight we turned the movie back on. We wound up engrossed in Kevin Costner building his dream. We cried at the end as we always do. I clicked off the TV. Scott nestled into my arms, and we fell asleep.

  Next morning I woke Neil Spirakos at 9 A.M. He cursed at the interruption of his beauty sleep, which even he acknowledged he needed more than the rest of us, but stopped when I told him I’d changed my mind about checking into the murder and explained about Jerry. I told him I wanted to meet with the people in the Faith organization who had the closest connection to Father Sebastian. He promised to set up a meeting for some time that day. They had a board meeting at four and Mass at six.

  I phoned the River’s Edge police station and asked Frank Murphy if we could see him. A police lieutenant and an old friend, he agreed to meet us late that morning.

  I tried calling the rectory but only got an answering machine. It said their office hours were Monday through Friday nine to eleven-thirty, two to four, and seven to nine. I’d never heard of part-time clergy before. I figured if you wanted to be a priest, it was sort of like being a doctor. People’s troubles don’t usually come conveniently according to fixed schedules. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but if you’re in the business of helping people with problems, aren’t you on duty twenty-four hours a day?

  We decided to drive over and confront Father Clarence unannounced. We arrived at St. Joseph’s Church to a slowly emptying parking lot. Caught in the traffic as we inched toward a parking spot, I had time to read a prominently displayed historical marker. The plaque boasted that the structure in front of us had been built with the earnings of the good farmers and first burghers of River’s Edge. Since this is the oldest southwest suburb of Chicago, after Blue Island, the church was well over a hundred years old. The faithful had kept it in pretty good repair. The original red brick, aged to a depressing maroon, enclosed a stolid rectangle broken only by narrow strips of stained glass that crawled two stories up the side of the building. There used to be a steeple, but it had burned three years ago; the firemen were just able to save the church itself. An ultra-modern complex sprawled around the old building: a school of gleaming new bricks, a gymnasium complex, a rectory that was obviously somebody’s idea of a modest $500,000 suburban bungalow.

  “I thought these Catholic Church guys were supposed to help poor people, not live in luxury,” Scott said. “This looks like something a TV evangelist might build.”

  “Don’t be prejudiced,” I said. “I don’t think it makes a lot of difference which denomination they are. The clergy’s pretty much the same all over.”

  “I guess,” Scott said.

  Several parishioners pointed us toward the sacristy at the back of the church. We entered a well-lit stairway that led up. As we climbed, a door banged open. Seconds later two giggling fourteen-year-olds tumbled by us. We heard the door below burst open, then crash shut. At the top of the stairs was a room filled with cabinets, benches, desks, cupboards, and cubbyholes, all made of wine-dark mahogany. A stained-glass window let in daylight. A muffled voice called that he’d be with us in a minute. The only light came from the window, a few lighted candles, and a doorway through which I could see an altar surrounded by mounds of fresh flowers—a large expense, I thought, in cold January.

  A smiling young man emerged from the closet. His face clouded when he saw us. “I’m Father Clarence. May I help you gentlemen?”

  Model-handsome, his black suit emphasizing his leanness, this was a man who would turn the heads of both men and women as he walked down a street.

  “New to the parish?” Father Clarence said, striding purposefully toward us, hand outstretched. He pointed to Scott. “You look familiar.”

  I introduced us as Jerry’s uncles and explained our concern about what Jerry had said. He responded with words of wounded innocence and calm reason. The bastard almost pulled it off. Maybe he went to suave school. The old ladies of the parish must eat up his act. They’d want to mother him, and let it show, and secretly want to pinch his youthful ass, but hide that deeply. Yet he’d escaped the effeminacy so often associated with priests and ministers. Men would like him. He’d play baseball and drink beer with them. I almost missed the oily shiftiness in his eyes. Without seventeen years of teaching school and ferreting out teenage lies from truth, I’d probably have been fooled too.

  He denied everything Jerry said. Claimed the boy’d been troubled for some time. Thought of talking to his mother about changes in the boy, a new moodiness. He didn’t like to bring it up, but perhaps a few signs of drug abuse? He tossed this last statement off casually.

  I think his smugness infuriated me the most. That and his calling Jerry a liar. Scott recognized the signs of my rising anger and stepped between us. He rarely loses his temper. The media call him “the iceman” for his cool under pressure.

  “Look, buddy,” he said. “We’re going to check out everything we can about Father Sebastian’s death. You’ve called Jerry a liar. Kids do lie. In this case, I don’t think he did. When I find out the truth, and if you’re implicated …” He paused and gave the icy stare that had paralyzed more than one Major League batter. “If you’re implicated,” he repeated quietly, “we’ll be back.”

  Father Clarence kept his mouth shut but left a pitying smile on his face.

  All the way to the meeting with Frank Murphy, I swore at the priest, defamed the Roman Catholic Church, and cursed all self-satisfied hypocrites.

  For the police station, the January thaw had proved an unfortunate event. The deeper the snow got, the more it tended to mask the flaws in the crumbling debris-encircled structure. Dirty, faded bricks, possibly once yellow, crept around a two-story disaster area. Gutters lay stacked and dented against the side of the building. They’d managed to pay for the things but forgot to allocate enough money for someone to finish the job installing them. In the autumn someone had raked leaves, rusted beer cans, and broken glass into huge piles now revealed by the retreating snow. In a vain attempt to dress up the place in the past year, someone had smeared orange paint over the building’s battered old shutters. Unfortunately, the town’s landmark committee now wanted the place preserved as a historical site. Because of this, for the moment, they could neither fix it up nor tear it down. They certainly didn’t have the money for a new station.

  Inside, the officer on duty wore a bright blue uniform shirt, crisply ironed, along with a congenial smile on his face, presenting a pleasant contrast to the grimy walls and nicked and scratched counter.

  We met Frank in an interrogation room. It contained a table, three chairs, four walls, and a door—all painted flat gray. A rusting radiator hissed at us softly.

  Frank wore a conservative blue sport coat, black jeans, white shirt, and a loosened red tie. He greeted us warmly.

  He and I had had some great successes and some equally spectacular failures with some very messed-up kids over the years. Last June we attended the college graduation of a kid who spent what was supposed to be his senior year in high school in Stateville prison. We’d managed a miracle turnaround on that one. It’s good to remember those kids when month after month you stand by helplessly as others toss away whole lifetimes.

  We talked awhile about the coming baseball season and then about troubled kids. Frank and I had to make a court appearance in a couple of weeks in a parental custody battle. Neither one wanted the child.

  I asked about Father Sebastian, explaining my interest.

  He shook his head. “We’re only peripherally involved. He lived here, but he died in Chicago. It was a nothing case. Thousands of people die like him every day. Too much cholesterol and they keel over. Fifty-one’s not too young for that.”

  I told him about Monica’s perception of his health and spirits.

  “She a doctor?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Do I nee
d to say more?”

  I grimaced.

  He continued. “I’m not saying your nephew lied. You and I have both heard more fantastic stories from kids less trustworthy that turned out to be horribly true. But look at what we’ve got: a twelve-year-old kid versus a popular priest.” He held out his hands palm up and shrugged. “Who wins?”

  I sighed.

  “I know all the priests over at St. Joseph’s. My wife and kids go every Sunday. I show up if I’m not working.” He gave us his impression of the priests in the parish. He continued the litany of kindness and light we’d heard for Father Sebastian: a good man in the right sense, willing to help, go out of his way for anybody for the smallest thing. Father Clarence he didn’t care for. “I agree with your judgment. Something about that guy is wrong. He’s too perfect. Does everything right. Kisses the asses of all the right parishioners. Lots of people began to ignore Father Sebastian, talked about retiring him. Poor guy, doing a simple good job, and this flashy kid steps in.” He shrugged. “It happens.”

  “You think there was jealousy?”

  “Nah. Sebastian didn’t work that way, and if Clarence felt it, he’d never let it show. Although …” He hesitated. He eyed us carefully, stretched his legs out, and crossed them at the ankles. “I hate to repeat tawdry gossip.”

  We leaned forward.

  “I found this out from the guys on the night shift.” He cleared his throat theatrically. “Father Clarence isn’t always where he belongs.”

  “Huh?” we said.

  He explained. On nighttime emergencies involving parishioners needing a priest—for last rites, for example—because the rectory had an answering machine, someone, usually the police, wound up banging on the rectory door. Several times Father Sebastian had let it slip that it was Father Clarence’s night on duty. Father Clarence drove a very expensive red Corvette that Frank’s source claimed often didn’t appear in the rectory parking lot until just before 6 A.M.